Voices of the Infection
by Ferric
Summary: A series of one-shot stories, each 'chapter' is its own story, unrelated to the previous. Chapter six was a hard one for me to write, but it needed to be done. My take on Karen Parker.
1. The Red Line

Even though there's not really time for it now, there won't be a chance for it when this is all over so I let him talk so he can be done with any indecision that might be left, any regrets or doubts. I had the better part of a lifetime to get ready for this, he's had less than a month.

ZEUS, the Blacklight virus, Alex Mercer, whatever name he's known by, he's the only chance this city has left. The military has failed, Blackwatch failed, worst of all, I failed. He's the cause of all this and only he can set it right again, so I let him talk. From time to time, when he pauses as though expecting condemnation I encourage him to continue, I try not to offer judgment. I'm not one to judge at this point and judgment is the last thing he needs.

I'm hardly even listening to him as lost in my own thoughts as I am. It doesn't matter though, he just he needs to tell this all to someone and I'm the only one who'll ever give him the chance.

Maybe I'm letting him talk because I know I won't live to see the end of all this and deep in that animal part of the brain where survival is the only thing that matters, I'm not ready to die yet. As long as he keeps talking I'm putting off dying. Maybe that part that doesn't want to die isn't even me anymore. There's little enough of me left now and death would be a relief.

I'm fading fast.

_We will burn our own to hold the red line._

We all said it and all took it to heart, or at least thought we did when we thought it meant that we might end up needing to kill the guy standing next to us to contain an outbreak. Now I understand that we're all the guy next to someone and right now it's my turn to be that guy.

It's my own fault too.

Mercer continues to unburden himself of the sins he's collected in the name of vengeance and truth, the sins he's gathered from those he's consumed and those who manipulated him.

I wish that I could have the chance to make such a confession, but that would ruin everything, everything I've set him up to do. I am one of those manipulators.

Even before I realized that I was dying I was working on building him up to something useful. Blacklight was supposed to be our weapon after all.

Randall was too paranoid, too cautious, ready to nuke Manhattan and wash his hands of the whole mess rather than look and see how the situation could be turned to our advantage, a field test for our latest technology and pet projects. Not to mention I may have wanted to get the chance to play at being a hero for once. Normally Blackwatch destroys things, but this could have been my chance to save something for once.

From the start I knew Mercer could put an end to it, he just needed a little push in the right direction.

This is what Blacklight was engineered for.

Mercer doesn't realize the truth, but why should he? He's not the expert, he's just the tool in the hands of the expert. He thinks that he's just like the infected roaming the streets, but he's dead wrong. They're not Blacklight in any usable form, they're whatever strain Green spewed out when he set her free.

His strain of Blacklight has no compulsion to spread, it's supposed to be safe to use. It, Mercer, is the ultimate biological weapon, beyond even what the so called super soldiers are capable of. The super soldier project was a waste of time and funds, as demoralizing for our men as they were devastating to the infected.

Mercer doesn't realize that Green was actually one of two central minds maintaining the momentum of the virus and when the second, backup mind, the one that would have ended up a most unusual and terrible runner in any other circumstances, is killed the infection will cease to spread. I've dealt with this before, so I know.

Maybe I'm letting him talk because I feel bad about what I'm doing to him. I get to take the easy way out, he's going to live with what he's seen and done.

For him it's been just a few weeks of unforgivable actions, for me it's been nearly a lifetime of such deeds. For me it's nearly over and I'm glad for it.

I spent my whole Blackwatch career building up an image, a reputation, and that's what killed me, not a runner, not one of the infected, not even the virus itself, but the man I made myself to be.

And now that image is all I have left to cling to, all that's keeping me going.

No one will ever know now, but when I hunted down and killed that last runner and everyone before that, I saw her as the girl she once was. I felt the obligation to end them myself rather than let one of my men do it because I would remember them, remember that they once had lives and loved ones who, if they were still alive, would forever wonder what happened to their missing daughter.

But that wasn't the face my men saw, to them I was larger than life, chasing down that runner on my own because I was that brave, that good at what I did.

That image, the face I showed to the world, or at least that dark little corner of the world where I did all of my work, was also the reason I refused to wear any of the usual protective gear.

I knew the virus wasn't airborne, we all did, but I was the only one brave enough to not wear a mask, or at least that was what they all thought. It inspired them even if they were too fearful to do the same.

The real reason I did it was to deprive myself of the shelter of anonymity. Too many of the others were able to hide behind their masks and from their hiding place gain the sick bravery that let them do all of the unspeakable things that we did.

The virus has to enter the bloodstream for a person to catch it, so there was no need to wear a mask other than to hide your face from the people you would kill.

I still don't know how I caught it. I was never bitten or scratched, thank goodness. If my men had known they would have needed to kill me and that would have been devastating for moral and given Randall the excuse to drop the bomb and be done with it all. Maybe I'd cut myself shaving, not impossible considering how hard it is to get around those old scars, something too small to see, but just enough for blood splatter from shooting a hunter at close range to get to it.

If that were the case than leading by example would be the cause of my death. There was no need for me to be out on the front lines at my age, fighting the infection face to face, but I wouldn't feel right sitting behind some desk, ordering others to commit atrocities in the name of protecting America from whatever super plague our scientists were smart enough to cook up and dumb enough to let get out.

I don't even know when I first realized I was infected because the whole notion that I might succumb to the virus was something that never crossed my mind..

The headaches I blamed on stress and all of the noise, helicopters taking off and landing, explosions from all around, the howls of the infected.

The nausea was due to the smell, all the blood, the rot, the wet, meaty stick of the infected.

The shaking was nerves, it was all stressful and I wasn't getting any younger.

Now I won't be getting any older.

They all kept up though, getting steadily worse until I was actively struggling against my own body. I still didn't think of it as the virus though. I wouldn't let myself think of it in those terms.

I could feel it creeping up in me, getting a foothold in the back of my mind, but I fought it off like I'd fought everything else off, advancing age, failing health, the guilt that came with making a career of atrocity. I didn't ignore it, I fought it into submission and went on with holding the red line, that damned line that's all that's separating me from the infection.

I do know when I finally accepted it, when the hunter didn't kill me when it killed all the others. No amount of justifying could explain away that even if my men were willing to believe that I survived because I was just that good.

Protocol dictated that I should have reported what I had come to accept, but I couldn't. It would have been the end of Blackwatch, the end of the city and who knows what else. As bad as we are, Blackwatch is the only thing protecting America from things like Green the other monsters it's created.

Since then I've been living on borrowed time and strength of will. In a way I'm glad that Randall's decided to act now, forcing me to play my hand and push Mercer to end all this. Otherwise I might have just kept fighting and losing ground little by little until there wasn't enough of me left to keep going.

Fighting the infection within and without has been exhausting. I haven't been able to sleep for days.

Every time I close my eyes I can feel it spreading, trying to push out who I am.

It's not visible yet, which would make me a runner if not for the fact that I'd never run, but if I fall asleep that'll be the end. I might not end up a runner, but I will end up something inhuman. Maybe something like Green.

I've been able to keep going for a week without sleep thanks to some wonderful little pills not available to the civilian population, but they only work for so long, and then you crash.

And when I finally crash I won't be coming back up afterwards. The virus doesn't sleep, it'll overwhelm me and make me it.

Little bits and pieces have been falling away, it's breaking down everything but my will to fight because that's all I have left.

Like Randall cut off his arm to stay alive, I'm cutting off bits of myself, my mind, to hold out against the infection. All the little useless things I accumulated over my life, unimportant memories are part of what has to be burned to hold the red line. I'm left with the bare essentials, the most easily defensible position.

If you were to ask me my mother's maiden name I couldn't tell you.

Where I went to high school is a blank as well, swallowed up by the raging black sea of the infection.

I don't even know why I got into Blackwatch to begin with. Maybe I started out as much a monster as all my men and can't recall what changed me.

All I know is that it can't be that important, otherwise I would have made an effort to save it.

What I was doing before the outbreak is a mystery to me as well.

I can only imagine what, if any, retirement plans I might have made.

_The red line is the final line to hold._

_We will burn out own to hold the red line._

It's such a thin line now though, the lapping darkness of the infection eating away at it.

All I've kept is what lets me fight.

I know why I don't wear a mask, and I know that I never forget the ones I've killed.

Mercer's done with his confession now and I wish I could start mine, but there's still work to be done while there's still enough of me left to do it.

o0o

Good.

Randall's dead.

Mercer can stop the bomb, I just don't know how.

His problem, not mine, not that I'm proud of that. My life was spent cleaning up other people's messes, now someone else has to clean up mine.

I just wish I could say something to him, but there's no time for all of what I'd like to say. No time for anything.

Even if it weren't for the bomb he needs to stop I can feel the crash coming on and I'm too tired and there's not enough left of me to fight it.

I'm drowning, but at least now I can sleep.

I just hope that when Mercer kills what I become he'll remember my face, what I was, because I don't think there's anyone else who will.

I don't.

~_**Rest**_~


	2. Near Normal

A man walked down the streets, head down, staring at the pavement. He walked as though on a mission, unwilling to let anything stop him. Moving much faster than those around him he nimbly dodged his fellow pedestrians with the practiced grace of one who had navigated these crowded streets many times before. Often, when the crowds grew particularly dense, he would step onto the streets and walk there. No cars drove past, but most people stayed out of the streets due to a lifetime of conditioning. Not even the worst of disasters could break some habits.

Just three days ago it had been announced that the military had succeeded in containing the outbreak to a few central hives, not that it mattered much to the average person walking the street. All anyone cared about was that the worst of it seemed to be over despite the way there were still infected and worse roaming some parts of the city.

Many streets were still barricaded or impassable due to crashed cars and debris from buildings that had been damaged during the worst of the viral rampage. On one of the streets the man saw the remains of a tank laying upside down, the thick armor plating of the military vehicle covered in deep dents.

All subways lines had been closed down from the damage done when the infection went underground and all fuel was going towards the generators used in the bases the military had set up as well as those of hospitals and any other buildings providing what were deemed essential services.

Power and communication were out in large swaths of the city from the damage the infection had done underground.

Throughout the city, usually near the military bases or any churches or synagogue that had survived, were stations where canned food, bottled water and first aid were being offered, but that was not the reason this man was braving the streets.

A few businesses were already reopening, seeing the possibility of publicity coming from reopening within a week of an act of terrorism that made the September 11th attacks seem like a very poor joke.

This man, like so many others, now sought out one of those businesses and nothing was going to get in his way. After all that he had been through, all he had seen he felt as though he would go mad if he did not do something that he recalled as being normal when normalcy seemed so very far away.

For this reason he was braving rubble strewn streets and skirting quarantined areas, the hot zones as he knew them to be called.

He had heard rumors that a Starbucks coffee shop had opened and he intended to get a cup of coffee. Nothing was going to stop him, not the general state of disarray the city was in, not the military, not the infected, and not the fact that he had only the vaguest idea of where this possibly nonexistent open coffee shop might be. Near a military base was what he had heard, and he knew where all of those were. It was just a matter of finding the right one

From time to time he paused as though to gain his bearings, or considering picking up his pace.

After each of these stops he shook his head and sighed heavily, as though dismissing whatever thought had crossed his mind.

Early on in the outbreak he had lost his apartment and since then he had been resting where and when he could, always far from where the military was fighting the infected. It had been good for peace of mind at the time, but now it made his journey all the more arduous. With the streets in the condition they were, he would have to try around the nearest base and if there was no open Starbucks there he would have to give up for the time being. Adding to the difficulties he faced was that the whole city seemed unfamiliar to him. Each street filled him with a sense of déjà vu, either from the recollection of a scene of destruction elsewhere or the knowledge that he had once walked down the streets when the buildings were undamaged. It all left him feeling very disoriented and wondering if he was even going in the right direction. He knew where the base was, it was just finding his way to it that was difficult.

One more block and he would change his focus to trying to find a place to get some rest.

So far, just as he known there would be, it seemed that there was a Starbucks at every corner, just as prolific as any disease.

The thought made him smile, but it was a bitter smile. The disease was still active, despite the military's best efforts, but the same could not be said for any of the coffee shops he had passed so far.

Just as he was getting ready to give up hope he noticed that the people around him were moving with a bit more purpose. Either there was a station handing out supplies nearby or he was approaching the fabled open Starbucks.

A gust of wind, driven between the tall buildings brought with it an acrid scent, one that took him a moment to place.

He was used to death, smoke, the stink of the infected and the Bloodtox that the military had been spraying all over the city for a short time. This though was different, this was one that triggered all sorts of memories, most pleasant.

It was the smell of burnt coffee.

Closing his eyes and leaning against the site of a building, he gathered his thoughts and tried to clear his head. That a simple smell carried so much meaning overwhelmed him for a moment, but it was the smell of normalcy, something he had experienced precious little of in the past three weeks, three weeks that felt like a lifetime in retrospect.

Down the street he could see the building, draped with American flags, as seemed to be the fashion with businesses after any disaster of sufficient scale.

In between the flags there were signs on the windows, which he attempted to read as he drew closer.

Most were either blocked by the crowd of people waiting to get into the coffee shop, or meaningless bits of jingoism.

'_We support our troops!_'

'YES WE CAN!'

'_Semper fi!_'

'_Marines served first – _SERVED FREE'

'_Hope!_'

Others were more telling:

'_NO milk'_

'_limited selection_'

'_service stops at sunset_'

The man he had overheard talking that morning had not been kidding when he had said that it was near a military base. On one side of the street was the base, on the other was the coffee shop. Seeing so many armed men in uniform left him feeling jumpy even though he knew he had no reason to be afraid at the moment. Like all of the other people in the area, he just wanted coffee.

A line of people wound around the block and he had to search for the end. It took him past the base and out of sight of the Starbucks.

With nothing else to do he got into line. After spending so much time looking for it he was not about to leave without his coffee. Hopefully the coffee, that little taste of normal, would bring him some peace of mind. He was at a loss to think of anything else that might.

Most of the people in front of him in line were talking about what they had seen or how grateful they were to be alive. One of them, a man in a rumpled business suit, tried to bring him into the conversation, but something about the look in his eyes made the attempt fail, killing the conversation for a time. Then a group of Marines arrived, and their presence seemed to drive away whatever apprehension had brought about the silence.

Between the conversation taking place in front of him and the Marines behind him, he started to feel trapped. As foolish as it was, he had to fight the urge to run when he saw that the Marines were still carrying their weapons.

He knew that it was stupid to feel as he did, for he was as safe here as he was anywhere else in the city, but he was unable to shake the feeling that a firefight between the Marines and the infected might break out at any moment.

Before he even realized that he had started to fall to his knees, a pair of strong hands was pulling him back up.

"Hey buddy, you okay?"

It took all his will not to pull away at the touch and he barely managed to nod 'yes' to the Marine who was trying to help him up.

"You sure?" another one of the Marines spoke up, "Because for a second there you looked like you were going to be sick."

"No!" he gasped and pulled away at the suggestion.

"Whoa, whoa," the Marine held up his hands defensively, "That's not what I meant. You looked like you were gonna blackout or something, not that you looked, well, you know."

The man nodded weakly, he did know, all too well. At a time like this the suggestion that one might be ill was as good as a death sentence, especially when there were men in uniform around. He had seen the infected gunned down by the hundreds as they staggered around helplessly before the disease reached the point where it destroyed their minds. Even those who might not have been infected, but simply injured, had been massacred.

"You sure you're going to be alright?" the Marine who had initially caught him held out his hands, ready to catch him again if necessary.

"Yeah," he finally managed to find his voice, "I just - "

But he trailed off, unsure of what he it was that he had just, so he tried again, hoping to make more progress and get the Marines to leave him alone, "Too much -"

Again he found himself unable to complete his thought. There was just so much going on and so little to focus on. He wanted coffee, not conversation.

To his amazement one of the Marines who had remained silent so far nodded sympathetically, "I know just what you mean man. This sort of shit, you don't expect it to happen in the good old U.S. of A, but here we are."

"Waiting in line for some star-fucks coffee," the Marine who had earlier asked if he was sick added.

In the state of mind he was in, it took a moment for the term 'star-fucks' to make sense. Someone he remembered speaking to, maybe a coworker of his, had been fond of calling Starbucks by that name.

Further conversation was put to a stop by the arrival of a young man in a black apron. He spoke to the Marines, but spent the whole time staring at the weapons they carried as though expecting to get shot. Like everyone else in the city, he was more than a bit jumpy, "You know you guys don't have to wait on line. If you read the signs you'd know you can just walk right in."

"Yeah, we read the signs," the one who had called the store 'star-fucks' said, "But we're right next to you. I bet some of these people came a lot further."

"Suit yourself," the apron clad worker said and rushed off.

Now that there was a lull in their conversation, the business suit clad man took advantage of it to bring the Marines into his conversation.

At first it was the usual pointless pleasantries, things like 'thank you for your sacrifice' and all that, but it soon became clear that the man in the business suit felt that he should be getting some answers.

"Is it true you've given up trying to catch that Mercer maniac already? I'd think that you'd want to get the man responsible for this before he could strike again," the suited man asked in such a way as to make the question an accusation.

To the surprise of all around the reply came from a most unexpected source. The man who had seemed ready to faint earlier spoke up in a voice stronger than he should have been capable of managing, given his earlier display, "Mercer should be the least of their worries right now. The city's still crawling with infected in some places and everywhere else is still a disaster area, no water, no electricity, no way of helping the injured."

"I know about that, but what about the bomb? If Mercer and his accomplices managed to get their hands on something like that, there's no telling what else they might be planning right now," the man in the business suit said indignantly.

"Getting out of this city alive probably," the sickly man retorted, "if he's even still alive. You think that they managed to get off the island? And when that bomb went off Mercer was at ground zero."

"What makes you say that?" the 'star-fucks' Marine asked, clearly amused by the conspiracy theorizing that was going on. It was obvious he knew more than either of the two men and was enjoying listening to them argue over matters they were clueless about.

"Maybe you know something the rest of us don't," the sickly man's tone made it clear he doubted that statement was true, "but I never heard anything about Mercer being part of any group. Besides, who else would be crazy enough to release some sort of mutant plague or set off a bomb like that right here in New York?"

At this statement a few of the Marines shifted their weight slightly, cleared their throats or generally became interested in things going on somewhere in the distance, away from the conversation. Oh, it was clear that they did indeed know something the two arguing civilians did not.

"Maybe he was working with Al Qaida," the suited man threw out, not ready to surrender his argument yet, "They're certainly crazy enough to set off a bomb and the previous administration did everything it could to antagonize them. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up being linked to this."

"Or maybe Mercer is working with Vlaams Belang," the sickly man retorted, using the first name that came to mind, that of a Dutch political party that was the center of many conspiracies and disagreements on the internet blogging community. He could remember, just for laughs, frequenting a blog that often ranted about Vlamms Belang as though it was the source of all the evils in the world, "There's no proof that Mercer was anything but a lone sociopath."

"Most lone sociopaths can't get their hands on biological or nuclear weapons like that," the suited man crowed, delighted to have gotten one up on his opponent.

"You know there's no evidence that Mercer was part of a group," the Marine who had first helped the sickly man to his feet put in, hoping to nip any conspiracy theories in the bud and put an end to the argument, "I think we're just all frazzled here because we haven't had our coffee yet."

This got a laugh from the other Marines and their laughter was contagious, putting an end to the argument.

Finally, as it was starting to get dark they reached the entrance of the Starbucks.

Despite their protests, the Marines were served first, though after the long wait their protests were none too great.

At last it was the man's chance to get his coffee, but he was uncertain what to ask for. He had no clue exactly what type he might like, what would be anywhere near normal. Several flavors stood out in his mind as being particularly good and particularly bad and he was gripped by indecision.

"Don't bother looking at the menu," the barista sighed, "it's decaf, hazelnut, lukewarm chai or nothing."

"Hazelnut," he said, not sure if he was relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands or upset that he was unable to chose on his own.

"Oh, and it'll have to be black and you're just getting one packet of sugar."

He shrugged, unsure of what to say to that.

"And that'll be three dollars seventy-five cents."

His helplessness returned as he reached for his pockets, already knowing how futile the action was. Of course he had no money, after all that had happened, why would he be carrying around the three dollars and change needed to get a simple cup of coffee?

One of the Marines must have been watching seen his distress and understood what was going on, for he rushed over with a five dollar bill in his hand.

As ineffective as they had been in fighting the infected, the Marines were proving more than capable of saving a man from having to go without his coffee.

Once that matter was settled he tried to leave, but the Marine motioned for him to come and sit down at the table where he and his companions were, "Don't go. After standing for so long you look like you need the chance to rest for a bit."

He let the Marine guide him to the table and felt embarrassment as the Marine pulled out a chair for him.

Seated, he closed his eyes so he would not have to see who he was surrounded by, he inhaled deeply, savoring the smell of the coffee. It took him to other places, where he had been with other people, people he had actually known and felt comfortable around.

When he finally took a sip he had to felt ready to cry. Everything he had been through seemed a million miles away, lost in the flood of memories that coffee brought back, times spent with family and friends, or just waiting alone in an airport for a flight to come in, business trips, pleasure trips, visits to relatives he had not seen in years. Early mornings alone with his worries and mornings with his fiancée. Memories as bitter as black coffee and memories as sweet as sugar.

"Man, you've been through hell, haven't you? Just like everyone in this cluster fuck," the Marine who had first helped him at the start of the ordeal laughed bitterly.

Opening his eyes, he realized that he must have been unable to hold back his tears.

"Hnn," the meaningless syllable was all he could manage, adding to the absurdity of the situation he had found himself in.

"It's okay buddy, you don't have to talk about it."

He finished his coffee with the Marines, in the silent understanding of people who had all survived hell and come out the other side with more than a few scars to show for it.

As he got up to leave a Marine again called out to him, "You going to be alright? I mean it's dark out and if you have far to go it might be dangerous. There are a few places near here where we've got the displaced staying. Me and the guys could show you to one of them."

"I'll be fine," he waved to them and left without looking back.

Feeling better than he had in weeks the man left the coffee shop and walked down the darkened streets away from the military base.

No one was on the street now save Marines and none of them gave him more than a passing glance, glad for the boredom that came with the lull in the fighting, not willing to make further excitement of any sort for themselves.

Less than two blocks from the base the darkness swallowed the lone man and safely out of sight he ducked down an alley way.

Shedding the form of one of his numberless victims, the from he had worn that day, Alex Mercer took a running start and dashed up the side of a building.


	3. Mastiff Puppies

Yeah, we've got the infection on the run, just like the media says, but like everything else, it can only run so far. We push it all the way back to a hive, and then it digs in. As far as the civilians are concerned it's all over but the shouting, for us it's looking like this is going to take a lot longer than the so called experts said it would.

The infection isn't actively on the attack anymore, which is a good thing, but the hives are as bad as ever, and that's where we're going, to one of the worst remaining hives.

Really, it's two hives that became one after we took out the smaller of the pair. The surviving infection moved into the remaining hive, building it up and reinforcing it. Basically it's a mess and we're heading straight into it. Nothing we can't handle though, so why someone decided to send those _things_ in with us I have no clue.

They came in with those Blackwatch guys, they must have because they work exactly alike, no names, no ranks, no obvious chain of command, no respect. Maybe they are Blackwatch, because thinking that there's more than one organization like that is too much. I mean I know no country is blameless, but to see guys like that in action, it makes you think long and hard about exactly what you're fighting for.

The ordinary Blackwatch guys are bad enough, but these things, they're the reason I'm quitting once this is over. To think that somewhere we have scientists coming up with this sort of stuff, labs cranking those things out and that's not the worst of it. These guys were sick enough to volunteer to…to become things.

One of the guys in the platoon thinks that they didn't volunteer, that they were brainwashed.

I don't know which would be worse, that they agreed to it or the thought they had no choice. I mean what does it say about a guy that he'd be willing to…

I know there's a lot of stuff they can do with drugs and surgery these days, but I don't think they can do that to a guy yet so I guess they must have known what they were getting into and agreed to go through with it.

I could be wrong though, there were a lot of things I used to believe they couldn't do. Now that I've seen they can do I want out before I'm too far in. What I've seen so far will stick with me forever, but those _things_ bother me the most. The infected civilians, the monsters pouring out of buildings, the worms coming up from beneath the streets, the things Blackwatch brought in with them will be what keeps me up at night, but I'm stupid that way. Weird things get to me.

I thought the guys looking to make a career of the military were hardcore, but now I realize I had no clue what hardcore was, Blackwatch is hardcore, the others, the things, they're crazy.

When Blackwatch first called them in we heard talk of 'super soldiers'. To me and the guys that sounded like Blackwatch's Blackwatch, the guys that Blackwatch thought were crazy. We were expecting guys like their commander, that Cross guy, who supposedly fought that ZEUS thing one on one and was able to walk away afterwards. We were expecting them to be human.

I'll never forget when we first saw them, just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach.

We thought they were funny at first because what we saw was so unexpected to us, so alien that we had no clue what we were actually seeing.

They arrived, ten of them walking towards our base with this little mouse of a man up in front, strutting like all of those Blackwatch bastards do when they're going to say something they know we won't like. We laughed when we saw them, because we needed a good laugh and because I swear it looked like there was a midget with them, a munchkin in one of those freaky Blackwatch biohazard suits and the super soldiers were pretty funny looking from a distance, all stooped over and round shouldered like their biohazard suits were the wrong size. Then they got closer and it wasn't so funny anymore.

The little guy wasn't a midget, the super soldiers were all monsters, easily over nine feet tall.

Like the other Blackwatch guys, they never talked to us except to give orders or demand information and never took off their protective gear around us, but they were nothing like the others.

We tried to ignore the rest of Blackwatch, but these guys you couldn't help watching, trying to figure out what they were. We were all watching them even more than we were watching out for the infected.

They sort of shuffled around and from time to time they would stop and rub at their joints like they had arthritis or something, but if there were any infected around or you got in their way you'd see that they could move just fine. Once, during a fight with some of the bigger infected, I saw one of them shove a tank out of his way.

Everyone seems to have a similar story though, we sort of collect them for some morbid reason, like the guy who says he saw two of them pull an infected in half.

I've talked to another guy who said he saw one of them get the sleeve of his suit get torn off after getting swarmed by infected. The guy said that underneath his gear the super soldier's skin was all gray and red with bumps and furrows that looked like tire tracks in mud.

I tired telling him that it was just another layer of protective gear and that the red was blood from the infected, but he insisted that the super soldiers were just like the infected under all the gear they wore.

And they're working with us right now, except with us isn't right. Just like the rest of Blackwatch, they're doing their own thing along side us, but now it's because none of the officers have any clue what to do with them. Everyone wants them gone, but no one has the courage to tell them to get lost.

Right now they're in front of us, where we can watch them, clearing the streets.

There are wrecked cars everywhere from when people tried to evacuate. They're a pain in the ass now, because orders are that before we go after this hive we have to have at least half of the roads to and from it clear. Apparently yesterday miscommunications and blocked roads caused some problems elsewhere in the city. No word on how many casualties, but there must have been to get a response like that. Just because the infection isn't spreading like it used to be doesn't mean that the higher ups don't think it's still catching. You get hurt and you vanish, or at least that's what I've heard.

When this is over I'm quitting.

One of the super soldiers picks up the burned out frame of a car and holds it for a bit, sort of looking at it like he's trying to figure something out before tossing out of the way.

"You ever seen anything like that?" Fletch, one of my squad mates, asks.

"No," I lie. I've been watching them do this all morning and I know exactly what they're like, the way they're so impossibly big, inhumanly strong and not quite sure of themselves. They're just like mastiff puppies, but if I said that to anyone they'd think I'm crazy because everyone thinks puppies are cute. Kind of like how everyone thinks that zombies only show up in late night bad horror movies.

Mastiff puppies are not cute, I know because my mom used to show English mastiffs.

When I was little we had this massive, almost, but not quite champion, fawn mastiff bitch named Prudence Prim.

I was terrified of her and everything my mom did only made it worse. The dog weighed nearly two hundred pounds and I was hardly taller than her at the time, but mom made me walk that dog around the backyard every day like I was showing her for the judges at some stupid, fancy dog show. She was a gentle enough dog, but that meant nothing to my nine year old self.

I never let mom see how scared I was and I guess she thought I was cured of my dislike of Prudence because she started making plans to get a puppy, this one a dog.

The whole time I kept silent, hoping that mom would give up, and it took so long to get that damned dog that I was actually sure that she had. Then one day I got off the school bus and mom was waiting for me with this little, squirming brindle thing. It was our new dog, my new dog, but it was so small compared to Prudence my first impression was that it was a cat.

I went up to him and he was so excited to see me he fell over and when I helped him back to his feet he pissed all over my shoes in gratitude.

He couldn't have weighed more than twenty pounds and I loved him.

Stupid kid that I was, I made no connection between the little brownish puppy and the massive animal that also lived in our house. He already had some long, fancy show dog name, but I called him Gunter and for about a month I was happy.

He was the kind of dog I'd always wanted, one smaller than me, one I could actually play with.

In his first month with us Gunter nearly doubled in size, but he didn't realize it. He would still try to curl up and sleep on the little pillow I kept in my room for him. When he stopped fitting on it he would walk around, sniffing and circling it like it was the pillow that had changed.

He kept growing and by the time he reached a hundred pounds I stopped letting him sleep in my room at nights. The only reason he let me push him out the door was because he didn't realize that he was stronger than me. Because mom got him for me Gunter was my responsibility, so I had to keep walking him, training him, giving him baths and all the stuff that comes with owning a fancy show dog, even when he was bigger than Prudence.

I still tried to play with Gunter for a while though, just to prove to myself that I wasn't afraid.

Once a turtle got into our backyard, a big one too, the size of the softball I was throwing for Gunter to fetch. I never realized it was a turtle until the horrible crunch. Gunter crushed the thing when he was just trying to play with it. From that point on I was as afraid of Gunter as I was of Prudence, maybe even more so.

The sound that turtle made stuck with me. I imagined that the bones in my arm or skull would make the exact noise if Gunter were to grab me squeeze, not realizing that he was so big and I was still just the same.

When the Blackwatch super soldiers first got sent out to help us I saw one of them kill an infected by breaking its back and stomping on its skull. I wasn't the only guy who got sick from what they saw that day, but none of them were thinking about that poor turtle, the poor stupid dog who killed it because he didn't realize he was so damned big and the fact that he could have done the same thing to me.

Prudence got old quick and her hips started getting bad. When mom finally took her to the vet's for the last time it was all I could do to keep from doing a victory dance. I thought my dog problem was half over, but I was wrong.

Whoever mom had gotten Prudence from knew about Gunter and gave mom a new puppy, another bitch. There was some sort of deal between the two of them, but I never bothered to learn the details. All I knew was that it involved Gunter and the new dog having puppies.

When the puppies finally came they were Gunter all over again, only worse because the new bitch got mean when she was protecting them. She was fine with mom, but she wouldn't let me in the same room. I felt like a prisoner in my own house and Gunter only made it worse because he would try to follow me and put his head in my lap when all I wanted to do was get away from big dogs and little dogs who would turn into big dogs.

Mom decided not to keep any of the puppies and when the last of them was gone I realized for the first time that there was a way out. Just like the puppies left when they were old enough, I could leave when I was old enough. That became my goal in life.

So as soon as I was old enough I joined the Marines and said goodbye to mom and her mastiffs for what I hoped was forever.

Now I'm surrounded by them again, maybe they look different, but the rest of it is the same, the size, the clumsiness, the effortless and unknowing brutality.

The way the super soldier looked at the ruined car was just like how Gunter looked at his pillow, but because they're people and not stupid dogs it's different.

They might feel regret over what they've done to themselves, they might be bitter about what they've lost and if they are then we're in trouble.

It's already happened in a way. I don't care what the official position on him is, what we've been told to think, I know that ZEUS isn't an it, I've seen him. ZEUS isn't some weapon or virus, he's just a guy who they did something to, something that pissed him off. I have to wonder, what's to keep the super soldiers from doing the same after this is all over? I mean we all get to go back to what passes for a normal life after what we've seen, but normal isn't an option for them anymore.

When this is all over I'm quitting while I still have the chance.


	4. Viral Dreams

"ZEUS is heading your way. It's sticking to the rooftops so look out above," the voice coming in over the radio sounded decidedly shaky, which did nothing to calm his nerves.

The helicopter had been following ZEUS for twenty minutes now, herding it towards their position. Until now he had believed what he had heard repeated so many times, that ZEUS was the codename for a whole terrorist organization, a cell operating from within New York. They all dressed the same to convince people that they were one man who was impossible to kill.

The past twenty minutes had ruined that for him, listening to the reports coming in from the helicopter about how ZEUS was moving along the rooftops left only the most terrible rumors he had heard plausible. That ZEUS was a monster, a living weapon escaped from the lab where it had been held, that it was the embodiment of the virus ravaging the city, that it infected everything it touched and would continue on its rampage until it was destroyed or there was no one left for it to kill.

Waiting was the hardest part, giving him time to consider all of the terrible stories he had heard from men who had claimed to know someone who had seen ZEUS first hand.

Each time an update came in from the helicopter crew he felt his stomach sink as he learned how much closer ZEUS was to their position. It was like watching a tidal wave rushing straight at you with no possibility of escape to higher ground.

"It's a block away from your position and closing fast. Wait, wait. It's stopping…it's…"

He looked up towards where the helicopter was, hovering over where ZEUS supposedly was, wondering why the guys in the helicopter had not simply fired upon whatever building ZEUS was standing on, crushing him under tons of rubble.

"Holy fuck!"

The helicopter rose abruptly and veered away, but it was too late. As he watched helplessly something hit the helicopter, completely destroying the rotors and sending the helicopter plummeting from the sky.

All around him the others were staring dumbstruck at the place where the helicopter had been just seconds ago.

Something darted across the rooftops, a blur heading straight towards them.

"That's ZEUS! It's here!"

All around him, his fellow Marines, the men he had served with, trained and fought alongside, now ran around in a mindless panic, or just stared and watched death heading their way.

One of them had the presence of mind to remember his training and start shooting at ZEUS, but ZEUS was either moving too fast to be hit, or really could not be killed, for it kept coming closer, never stopping, never slowing down.

His own gun was nowhere to be found, it must have slipped from his fear numbed hands, for he found himself unarmed, unable to do anything other than watch as ZEUS took a running leap off the top of a building then fell like a stone.

Now he found himself able to move, to run, but it was too late. By the time he turned to try and flee the shockwave from ZEUS' landing knocked the breath from his lungs and sent him sprawling to the ground, falling flat on his face.

The pain must have caused him to pass out, for the next thing he knew he was being lifted from the ground by impossibly strong hands. The fingers of whoever was holding him were literally digging into his shoulders, he could actually feel his bones grinding against each other.

Unable to breath through his nose, he could taste blood and his whole face was sticky with blood from his broken nose.

One of his eyes was swollen shut, but he could see well enough to recognize what it was lifting him off his feet.

ZEUS had him.

Under the shadow of its hood he could see cold blue eyes.

"I need answers. You know where someone who has them is."

A drop of blood fell from his face onto ZEUS' and where it landed the black and red things writhed beneath its skin. Elsewhere he could see similar strands rising up from ZEUS, reaching towards him as though in anticipation of further blood being spilled.

"I won't – "

His words ended in a scream of pain as those red and black strands surged forward, digging into his skin and working their way deeper, seeking…

o0o

Yet again Alex Mercer woke up shaking from a nightmare where he saw himself through the eyes of one of his countless victims.

Just like each of the other times he had such a dream, upon waking up, he was wearing the form of a dead man rather than his own.

A moment's concentration and he was back to as he should be, but he was too wound up, too nervous to try and get back to sleep. After all he had been through he felt pathetic to end up like this, sitting along in a dark room in an abandoned building, too afraid of what nightmares he might have to try and get back to sleep, but there was no helping it.

He was a grown man, more than that, he was a monster, a killer virus, a living biological weapon and he was afraid of dreams like some little kid.

Nightmares like the one that had awoken him were not even the worst sort, nor were the ones where he would wake up with his hands shifted into claws or blades, or his entire body covered in living armor, reminding him of what he really the worst sort. Once he had even destroyed the place he had been sleeping in when he sent spikes tearing through the walls and floor of the room, but that had been nothing.

Then there was the absolute worst kind of dreams, where he relived the best moments of another person's life and woke up into the real nightmare. To be a woman on her wedding day, or a man watching his son graduate from college only to wake up and remember that the person in the dream was not you, was in fact dead by your own hands was too much.

As much control as he had over his body when awake, once asleep where his subconscious could rise to the surface, he became a danger, as much to himself as others.

For that reason he avoided any place where people might be living when he needed to rest. Though dangerous for him, there was no risk to others if he stuck to areas still quarantined due to their proximity to the remaining hives, or too badly damaged for people to be allowed back in.

He paced the apartment, going from room to room, stopping from time to time to look at some picture or trinket, a reminder of the people who had once lived there. There was some comfort in the fact that had not killed any of the people who had lived there, allowing him to believe that they still might be alive somewhere, waiting to resume their normal lives, something that would never happen for him.

There was nothing normal about him, and depending on how he looked at the situation, he might not even really be alive either.

Eventually he found himself in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror.

Dark as it was, it was difficult for him to see anything at first, but with a thought he worked the changes necessary to allow him to see in near total darkness.

Though unable to see any color, he knew his eyes were piercingly blue, though he could change that if he wanted to. He examined every angle and shadow that defined his features, all both familiar and strange. It was his face, but at the same time it was just the face of another dead man, the first victim of the strain of Blacklight that he had so painstakingly created. Alex Mercer was really just the first man he killed, without Mercer he was what? a vial of red liquid unknowingly waiting for the moment of release? a collection of DNA more dead than alive, in need of a host to be anything more than what it was?

He knew as much about Mercer as any of the other men he had killed, but because Mercer was first, that was who he considered himself.

With a thought his skin of his arms writhed with red and black tendrils of tissue which hardened into black armor, the bones of his fingers stretching out into organic blades.

How exactly he did it was a mystery even to him, something he had simply known how to do after consuming one of the hunter infected.

Another thought and his entire body was covered in armor.

Again he examined himself. No trace of humanity remained in the contours of what had been his face, even his eyes were gone, replaced by little seed pearl orbs the same color as the armor that covered the rest of him. For the first time he noticed that his mouth and nose were gone when he was like this, but his chest still rose and fell as he breathed. Since he had the time and nothing better to do, he looked himself over, attempting to make sense of what he had made himself into.

Careful examination revealed that there were thin slits in the furrows that ran over his armored form. Those must have been what he was breathing through.

None of it made sense from a human standpoint, it was all just the Blacklight virus' best attempt at an answer to the question of how to survive. Everything about him was dictated by what the virus needed. It did not need to make sense from a human standpoint, as long as it worked it was enough.

He quickly shifted through all of his offensive and defensive forms, noting how the substance that made him shifted and twisted as it flowed smoothly into new, technically impossible, shapes.

Each form felt as natural, or unnatural as any other form he wore.

Next he shifted into the form of one of the scientists he had killed and consumed, a former coworker of his to whom he felt no more attachment to than any of his other countless victims.

Effortlessly he shifted to become a Marine, then a Blackwatch commander before returning to what he considered his true form.

Each form he took felt the same to him, his default form, the face he knew as Alex Mercer, was no more comfortable than any other human face, or even his armored form.

Deciding to try something different, he concentrated on one of the female scientists he had consumed. An instant later he was staring at the reflection of the woman in the mirror. It felt no different, no more or less comfortable, than being a man or a monster.

The next shift he underwent, just to see if he could do it, took a bit more effort than any of the previous, changing the clothing he wore without changing the form. He remained a woman, but now wore his customary black jacket and hooded sweatshirt. The front of his shirt was open just enough that he was able to see the swell of the woman's breasts.

Despite what stolen memories would have had him expecting, the sight did nothing for him, though that may have been because he was the woman he was looking at.

Further concentration on the form he wore and he was naked, still a woman, but the shape of the body he wore was uninteresting, half of the answer humans had to survive and perpetuate the species and nothing more. The form was attractive enough based on his memories, but the part of him that he considered to be who he was found no attraction in it. In the end it all came down to survival of the species and there was nothing appealing about any of that. As much as he thought he should be interested, or at least curious, he felt nothing.

Changing back to himself was a matter of still more concentration rather than relaxation. Tendrils rode up from him, writhing and shifting, the soft, curved form of the woman expanding and hardening into the muscular angles of the man, it should have been revolting to watch, but as with each other transformation, he was unmoved.

He was Alex Mercer again, still naked, looking at the other half of humanity's answer to the question of survival. Memories which could have belonged to any number of his victims, again encouraged the idea of examining what he saw, taking note of what should have been most appealing, but why? Any of his features could be changed with a thought, the answers a man possessed to the questions of survival were meaningless to him

Being Alex Mercer was no different than being anyone else. Perhaps the form was more familiar, but there was no spark of recognition, no connection between the man in the mirror and who he truly was. Any connection he had felt to the face of Alex Mercer had been permanently severed by discovering the truth. Mercer was as much of a monster and the virus that had killed him.

He knew from the soldiers and scientists that he had consumed, as well as the more advanced infected he had observed, that the virus tried to shape its victims into something new, its ultimate answer to the question of how to survive. Did he appear as he did because that was the virus' best answer to surviving, or because it was his best answer to what a man should be?

Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, he decided to try and find out.

It was just a matter of relaxing and clearing his mind of everything except the way he felt when he allowed his form to change. By not concentrating on any desired end result beyond what his form seemed most willing to flow into he hoped to discover the true face of Blacklight, the face he wore before his first victim, when he was just a thing with no need for countless layers of masks and deception.

The sensation of his skin squirming until it erupted into red and black ropes stretching and shifting out from him was ordinary enough that he felt no need to open his eyes to watch. To him the change was as natural and comfortable as anything else he experienced, almost soothing in its familiarity. Besides, if he were to watch he might start giving himself an artificial goal of what form he wished to take.

At last he sensed that the transformation was reaching its end, the shifting slowed and then stopped. Whatever form he had taken, it felt different than the others, as though until this moment he had been tensing his muscles without even realizing it. Now he was completely at ease.

Eager to see what he really was, rather than what he pretended to be, he opened his eyes, or at least he tried to, only to discover that he no longer had proper eyes. He could sense heat just fine, and the difference between light and shadow, as well as feeling the movement of the air around him and the texture of the floor beneath him in a way far more sensitive than had been allowed by the human nerve endings he had mimicked, but that did not answer his question. He wanted to know what a living virus looked like, not how it saw the world.

Sensory organs not analogous to anything possessed by a human changed to become something more familiar, giving him an impossible view of the room. Eyes that he knew to be piercing blue, despite the fact that he could not see color, stared out in all directions at once, embedded in a shapeless mass of writhing, reaching tendrils of tissue.

Realization of the truth brought on revulsion that none of the false forms he had worn could.

The answer his true form gave to the question of how to recoil in horror was to convulse, to pull in on itself, tendrils and eyes retracting, soft sensory tissues hardening into numb armor.

There was no trace of humanity in the thing he had become, the true face of the Blacklight virus was that it had no face. Like all other living things, once everything else had been stripped away, it was just a thing, existing to perpetuate its own existence.

o0o

Once again Alex Mercer awoke shaking from a nightmare, the lashing tendrils that had erupted from his body in his moment of panic already starting to retract.

Plaster from the ceiling rained down on him and large holes had been torn in the walls.

Already the details of what he had seen in the dream were fading, leaving him nothing more than the impression of what he had seen upon entering a viral hive accompanied by a sort of sensory overload, and an intense, but fast fading, feeling of disgust.

With the room destroyed he gave up on trying to get any more sleep that night. Two nightmares in one evening was too much even for him, even if he was unable to remember much of the second. Knowing that it had caused him to lash out in his sleep was enough.

To avoid sleep, he was going to go out for a walk to keep himself occupied until dawn came, with the hope that some further distraction would present itself with the arrival of the next day.

But as he started to walk out the door a troubling realization struck him.

He had not been in a bedroom, instead he was in a bathroom and he had awoken in such a position that he would have to have been staring at the mirror.

If he had been sleepwalking he was even more of a danger to others than he had originally believed, and if he had not been sleepwalking, if his dream had been real…

Though he could not remember anything about his most recent nightmare other than a feeling of revulsion he shuddered. He was unable to shake the feeling that this nightmare would be added to the repertoire of dreams that tormented his nights and the half remembered events of stolen memories that made his days a living hell.

All that he had been through made it hard to distinguish dream from reality, the few memories of his own that he possessed from the countless fragments he had acquired from his victims. In his dreams the line between them blurred further, until he was as much his victims as he was Alex Mercer.

Looking back into the bathroom he stared at the broken mirror, the spider web cracks running through it reducing the image of his face to a jumble of features.

With a thought he shifted to his armored form and found that the new image made neither less nor more sense in the shattered mirror.


	5. If Not For Bad Luck

The last thing he remembered was that his men had been mobbed by the infected. The swarm had been mostly walkers, but there had been a good number of more advanced forms as well. Still, they had been holding their position with few problems, at least until ZEUS showed up.

It had appeared out of nowhere, killed three of his men as it rushed towards him, swatted aside an infected that got too close, then grabbed him by the throat. After what felt like an eternity, it shook its head and tossed him aside with enough force that when he hit the ground he blacked out.

By the time he regained consciousness the fighting was over, his men were all dead and ZEUS was finishing off the last few infected. Engrossed as it was in the slaughter, it never even noticed that he was still alive.

After what it had done, the fact that it was ignoring him was infuriating. For it to not bother with him after having killed all his men was an insufferable insult.

"Hey! I'm over here, you dumb fuck!"

ZEUS looked at him for a moment, its form losing cohesion, dissolving into a mass of writhing tendrils as it pulled the remains of one of the infected into itself, then turned away to grab another infected. It tore the thing apart, appearing to take pleasure in the violence. After finishing that one it looked around to see if there were any more, and when it saw none, it turned its attention to the fallen infected, looking to see if any of them were still alive.

"Damn it! Look at me you miserable motherfucker!"

ZEUS ignored him entirely, instead it kicked at one of the fallen infected, letting out a small sound of frustration when it remained motionless.

Having ZEUS right there and being unable to do anything, not even get it to look at him was like something out of a nightmare.

He had lost his rifle when it tossed him aside, but he had no intention of just letting ZEUS just walk away, not after what it had done. His men were dead and he was stranded in the middle of an outbreak of a size unprecedented in the history of Blackwatch. There was no way he could get out of the situation alive so he had nothing to lose by provoking ZEUS, if anything it would save him suffering in the long run.

"Don't you dare ignore me!" he screamed at it, unable to keep the edge of panic out of his voice.

When it remained focused on its examination of the infected he tried again. Finding a loose piece of concrete on the ground he picked it up and rose unsteadily to his feet.

"What's a matter cocksucker?" he threw the chunk of concrete at it, smiling when it hit ZEUS between the shoulders, "Still hungry?"

ZEUS stopped in mid stride, letting out a hiss of frustration, but it kept its back to him.

"Why don't you eat me?" he found another bit of concrete and threw it, again hitting ZEUS between the shoulders, "It's what you do, isn't it?"

"It's…not like that," it growled, clenching its fists when yet another piece of rubble hit it in the exact same spot, "It's not about being hungry or wanting to eat. I don't get hungry like you do. I don't even know if I can eat. It's about getting information or getting the raw materials to fix damage."

"So what the fuck are you doing now? Saving me for dessert?" the next rock he threw clattered off the armor that was forming over ZEUS' body.

"Stop that," it hissed, its voice slurred by the changes it was undergoing.

Despite himself he smiled. He was going to die, but at least ZEUS would remember him, and hopefully regret that it had not eaten him at the start of it all. Taking his eyes off ZEUS, he looked around for something else to throw at it, if it killed him while he was looking away so be it. Not seeing it coming would probably make things easier.

ZEUS had gone back to ignoring him, giving him plenty of time to find several pieces of concrete the right size for throwing.

"I used to play baseball back in high school. I sucked at it, but I guess I'm good enough for this," he said, laughing as the bit of rubble he threw hit ZEUS in the back of its head.

This time it turned around and growled at him, letting out a sharp snort when a chunk of concrete hit it in the face. He knew that there was no way what he was doing could be hurting it, but he sincerely hoped he was pissing it off. If he was lucky he ZEUS would remember him as being a particularly unpleasant meal.

Before he could try again, it lunged at him, grabbing him by the wrists and pushing him down to his knees.

Looking up at it, he realized that his biggest regret at the moment was that he had not removed his gasmask, leaving him unable to spit in its face, not that it had much of a face at the moment.

Its form writhed, but instead dissolving into a mass of tendrils and engulfing him as it had done with the infected, it began to return to its human appearance.

"What are you waiting for?" he struggled to stand up and found himself unable to, "I know you're still hungry."

As soon as it had a visible mouth it spoke.

"No," then it tightened its grip until he screamed in pain as the small bones in his wrists ground against each other.

"You wouldn't still be here if you weren't," he managed to gasp out, "So why am I still alive?"

It let go of him and shook its head, "I don't like…eating people."

"Why not?" he scowled as he rubbed at his wrists, surprised to find that everything seemed to be alright, "You've done it enough."

"I can hear them, all of them," it closed its eyes and turned away, "I don't want any more of that if I can help it."

"So you just attacked my men for the hell of it?" he stood up and grabbed ZEUS by the shoulders, no longer sure if he was trying to provoke it into killing him or if he actually wanted to know what was going through its mind.

"I thought you were someone else," it sighed and he let go of it, gagging.

Its breath was horrific, like it was rotting from the inside out, which, considering that it had just eaten who knew how many infected, was not all that surprising.

It waited for him to recover, its expression unreadable.

Since it seemed to be in a talkative mood, he decided he might as well try to find out more, not that he expected to be able to put anything he learned to use. Conversation would at least help pass the time until it decided to kill him and he no longer had the energy to yell at it, fear and adrenaline having long since worn off, "Who'd you think I was?"

"I'd tell you, but I don't want you warning him," ZEUS said with a smile that did not match the utter emptiness of its eyes.

"So you're…" he trailed off when he realized exactly what it had just said to him, "Wait, warn him? You make it sound like you think I'm going to get out of this alive."

This time its smile almost reached its eyes, "You seem like a nice enough guy, so I'm not going to kill you."

"I'm unarmed, alone, and in the middle of one of the largest quarantined zones. You'd be doing me a favor if you killed me. This place is swarming with infected. As soon as I get moving they'll all come after me," he was surprised at how tired he sounded. By now it was obvious that ZEUS was serious about not wanting to kill him and that nothing he did would change its mind.

"I know," it patted him on the shoulder as though to reassure him, "But they're not going to get anywhere near you."

He went to push its hand off him, but it had already moved away.

"Why the fuck not?" he shouted at it as it took a running start and scaled the side of a building. At the prospect of being left totally alone he discovered that he still had some fight left in him.

ZEUS stopped. Clinging to the side of the building, it turned and shouted back to him, "You were right about me still being hungry, I just prefer infected."

"Damn it!" he had time to throw one last piece of rubble at it, missing this time as ZEUS climbed higher, reaching the roof and disappearing from sight.

For a long time afterwards he stood, looking up at where he had last seen ZEUS, until a bit of rock hit the ground a few feet away from him.

With no other choice he started walking. If he got out of this alive he would have one hell of a story to tell, provided that he was not mistaken for one of the infected and shot on sight.


	6. Graveyards

Try as she might to occupy herself with the research she was doing, Karen Parker could not ignore the fact that she was a prisoner. She had gone along with Blackwatch out of fear and she had failed them. At the start of it all she had thought that she was siding with the lesser of two evils, she still felt that way though now she doubted the wisdom of that choice. Alex might have killed her, but there was no doubt in her mind that once this was all over Blackwatch was going to kill her. She had seen them in action, they had no qualms about killing in cold blood. They would let her live as long as she remained an asset, then kill her when there was nothing more she could do for them.

Right now they had her looking over what few research notes remained from when Alex had been working with the Blacklight virus. Because she had been closest to Alex, Blackwatch assumed that he had shared his findings with her, but they were mistaken. He had never spoken to her about his work and she had not been involved with the research being done on Blacklight. Now she was seeing first hand that his caution went beyond reasonable measures and into the realm of paranoia. When he had made a break for it he had somehow managed to destroy all traces of any of the data he had collected.

What she was left to work with was nothing. Alex had destroyed both his work and home computers, destroying the hard drives beyond any hope of salvation. The actual, physical notes he had left behind, vanished to some place that no one knew and Alex was probably unable to recall. Data was provided from researchers working on similar projects in the hope that she would be able to make the leap of logic necessary to go from a jumble to conflicting data to what Alex was now.

In truth she was out of her league and one of the few Gentek employees who could be considered truly innocent. Her work with the noncoding sequences of the human genome had been part of an effort to better understand the records of past plagues, human migration patterns and aggressive symbiosis. Few people outside of her field realized was that every person carried in them a graveyard of countless viruses that had, at some point in evolutionary history, infected people only to eventually fade out of existence, their only remains being bits of what were considered junk DNA. It was a misnomer of course, nothing retained in DNA was entirely without value, it just depended on circumstance. She spent her time trying to discover or rediscover those circumstances and determine what would happen when they came about. Cancer mostly, as Alex knew too well.

She had no clue how Gentek had used her findings prior to the outbreak, but she suspected the worst. It was a testament to her innocence that she was unable to imagine what the worst might entail.

Now she was using what she knew about viruses combined with the samples Alex had brought her and the few notes he had left on his research at Gentek to try to fool Blackwatch into believing that she knew more than she did. All her efforts amounted to was delaying the time when she would be killed, but she could not bring herself to let go of the vain hope that something might happen in the meantime. An actual breakthrough could occur, a cure for Redlight that worked, a weapon against Blacklight that lasted for more than a few days time, anything that might make her valuable enough to be allowed to live despite how dangerous Blackwatch thought she was. They feared, despite all she had said and done to help them, that she was still loyal to Alex Mercer.

A bitter smile came at the thought that she owed both her continued living and eventual death to Alex.

Life with him had taught her how to hide what she was thinking and not show fear. Alex Mercer had been, and still was, an intense man, and that was putting it kindly. Towards the end she had been as terrified of him as she was now.

It was not that he was abusive in the normal sense of the term, but living with him had taught her that what Alex Mercer wanted, he got, end of story.

He never talked about his family and she had learned never to ask, but she got the sense that what he had wanted to do was not what his family had wanted him to do and that though his parents were divorced, he still resented his mother for marrying his father to begin with. That was only her guessing based on what little information she had been able to get out of him before he had made it absolutely clear that the subject of his family was strictly off limits. For all she knew all his relatives were dead and he was an orphan.

How he had managed to get a job with Gentek was beyond her because that was another thing she was not supposed to ask him about. What she knew about that was what everyone else at Gentek knew, that Alex Mercer was a true prodigy and had managed to attract the attention of Gentek before he had even finished college. That was the way Gentek worked, harvesting the best and brightest in the fields it had an interest in before they had any professional connections and had acquired any biases from colleagues and the desire to earn funding. It was an admirable system, one that had worked well until Alex.

She had come to believe that what Gentek had seen in him was not his incredible intelligence, but his utter lack of concern when it came to the possible applications of what he was working on. Where else could they have found a virologist who seemed about as amoral as Dr. Josef Mengele? Of course Alex had not seemed that way when she had first met him. That side of him only showed up after it was too late, after the outbreak when she learned for the first time the actual nature of his pet project.

Now that she had been given access to the notes he had taken during his research, most of which were hardly notes at all, she was seeing that side of him fully for the first time. What remained of what he had written about his work was mostly egotistical ramblings, focused on the beauty he found in the viruses he was working with and his delight at being able to improve them. They also mocked the reader, making it clear that Alex had made his notes deliberately meaningless in the hope that someone would try to steal them.

It was clear to her that by improving viruses it meant making them more lethal, but she had been able to guess that much during her time with him. He loved to talk about viruses, focusing on what they did to the human body and the futility of trying to eradicate any of them. Reading in newspapers and journals about vaccine efforts failing was a special source of amusement for him and articles about how there were labs with smallpox strains that no vaccine would work against would always get a smile. In her naiveté she had simply thought of it as being like how some people liked things like skydiving or kept dangerous pets, such as venomous snakes and she had reassured herself that at least his morbid interests would never invade their home beyond being a topic of conversation.

His work had also been a forbidden topic, though for security rather than personal reasons, if any of his superiors found out that he was talking about what he was doing his career was as good as over. She got the feeling that it rubbed him the wrong way. Alex had liked to drop little non-hints about whatever amazing project he was working on, making it clear that he wished to brag about his work to her, to let her know everything. Of course he managed to keep silent, he may have been a lot of things, but he was no fool. Still, it clearly bothered him to have any restrictions placed on him.

The one thing she knew best about Alex Mercer was that what Alex Mercer wanted, he got.

He had wanted to go to an Ivy League school so he managed to get into Columbia University, he had wanted to get a job where he could study viruses without moral issues entering the picture so he ended up with Gentek, and at one time he had wanted her.

They had first met before she knew any of this. She was less than a month out of college and had just started work with Gentek. The building was so large and security and containment precautions had given it such a convoluted floor plan that she frequently found herself lost. It went without saying that employees were not given maps and there were no directories posted. One tour that showed you to where you would be working, and you were expected to never get lost.

On the day she had met Alex she was trying to find her way back to the lab she worked in after having to hand deliver a folder to a coworker in a different lab on another floor. Rather than taking the elevator all the way up to her floor, she had decided to use the stairs to go up the last four floors to her destination because she needed the exercise. Somehow she had ended up going up one extra flight of stairs and entered into the wrong floor, but because all of the hallways in the Gentek building looked the same to her, she failed to realize her mistake until she was well and thoroughly lost.

After discovering that she could not recall the way she had come from or find her way to an elevator, desperation got the better of pride and she walked into the nearest office, ready to admit that she was hopelessly lost and ask for help.

The office she ended up in belonged to Alex Mercer, who at the time had been finishing up a phone call with whoever it was he reported his findings to. At the time she had failed to realize who he was since none of the rooms were labeled with anything beyond numbers, which should have been her first hint that all was not as it seemed at Gentek.

After he hung up the phone she explained her situation to him and he had been very understanding, even offering to give her a more through tour of the building to keep her from making the same mistake again. Mostly the tour had been him pointing out closed doors and telling her that he was not allowed to give her details about the research that went on behind them, and then listing the floors where she was lucky she had not ended up because of how much trouble she might have ended up in if she was found there. It was obvious that he knew what was done in those labs he could not tell her about, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of asking for more details.

She had mostly forgotten about him, until a week later, when he stopped by the lab she was working in, walked right on in, ignoring several company policies in the process, and asked her if she had any plans for Saturday night. Caught off guard, she had answered no, she had nothing planned, and somehow ended up agreeing to go out with him on Saturday.

Afterwards she had noticed the strange silence of several of her coworkers who shared the lab with her and had asked them what she had just gotten herself into, for she had assumed that Alex was just another researcher, someone who had spent too long in the lab to recall proper social skills. She expected to be informed that she had just agreed to go out with the lab recluse or that he had a reputation for being a pervert, asking all new female employees out. Finding out that he was the head of research on some project or another had come as quite a shock, as did discovering that several of her female coworkers were envious of her for managing to catch his attention. Apparently she had been the first woman in the company he had taken notice of and many of the others had tired, viewing him as a shortcut to a promotion.

Their first date, for looking back at it, that was what it had been, was nothing exceptional, they went to a restaurant that would have been well out of her price range if not for Alex insisting that the meal be his treat. They made what she believed to be typical small talk. Alex had been the one directing the conversation, asking her all manner of questions about herself and carefully avoiding telling too much in response to the questions she asked him. It was only now that she realized how quickly she had fallen for him, the way he made her feel like the most interesting person in the world, rather than just another good looking woman who would never be taken seriously as a scientist because of her looks.

That was what stuck with her the most about that night, how he complimented her on her achievements rather than her appearance, something she had never expected to have happen. It was a hazard for nearly any professional woman, or so she assumed, something she had gotten used to. Back in college classmates of hers, who had been jealous of how well she had done and how much interest the professors, especially the male professors, had shown in her, started rumors about how she had slept around with half of the faculty to make sure her grade point average stayed nearly perfect. In truth she had worked hard for her grades, sacrificing any hope of a social life to pass all of her classes. She had wanted to believe that Alex was somehow her reward for all the effort she had put in to get a job at Gentek, making up for the social life and friends she had never had. She had been an idiot then and she knew it, but still, it had been fun to imagine that she had wound up with a dream job and a dream guy at the same time.

After their night out she went for an entire week without seeing Alex, or even hearing from him, but that was work. She would think about him and then work would distract her until one morning she entered the lab where she did her research and found the largest bouquet of flowers she had ever seen sitting on one of the tables. She had first thought that they were roses, but when she looked at them closer she discovered that they were actually deep red carnations, a strange choice, but she assumed there was some meaning to it.

That had been the start of a veritable bombardment of gifts. Every day after that it seemed that another flower or little love note showed up somewhere in her lab, sometimes hidden, other times in plain sight.

There was something almost childish about the way Alex courted her, like they were both in high school trying to flirt without being noticed or admitting their mutual attraction. All in all, she found it hopelessly endearing.

Then there were the more impressive gifts, like the fish, though it ended up being impressive for all the wrong reasons. That one Alex had given to her personally since bringing a live animal into one of the labs was a violation of safety regulations that not even Alex Mercer had been willing to risk, despite his blatant disregard for rules and how much the company seemed willing to let him get away with. He had handed a huge glass bowl to her as she got into her car to leave for the day and rushed off, with some comment about being late for a meeting, before she could get a good look at what he had given her.

In the bowl had been an enormous fighting fish, dull brown with streaks of red, blue and green in its flared fins. It was thrashing furiously in the water and ramming into the glass repeatedly. The target of its aggression was a flower shaped charm hanging from a necklace that had been looped around the top of the bowl. Each of the petals of the flower was a tiny garnet, her birth stone.

Since it was against company policy to wear any sort of jewelry in the labs, and unlike Alex, she was unwilling to break the rules, she was unable to wear the necklace the next day to show him how much she appreciated it. In reality, she liked the fish more since she normally avoided jewelry and makeup to maintain a more professional appearance, but every time she went out with Alex she made a point of wearing the necklace.

The fish she had taken home and kept on her kitchen table so that she would see it every morning. At first it had sulked in the bottom of its bowl, staring at her balefully whenever she walked by, but soon it grew to understand that she was the one who fed it and every time it saw her it would swim in slow circles around the top of its bowl and brilliant colors would flash across its scales.

One morning she had come into the kitchen and it took no notice of her, afraid that something was wrong, she peered into its bowl and saw that the fish was fine, it was just watching a fly crawl along the edge of its bowl. Every move the fly made the fish followed, occasionally its mouth would break the surface of the water as it attempted to get closer to the fly. When the fly flew away, the fish flared its fins and gills hitting the side of the bowl in an attempt to follow and when the fly came back the fish hit the glass again, trying to lunge at the insect.

At the time she had thought it was funny how badly the fish wanted to get at the fly, but when she got home from work that night the fish had been dead on the table, dried out and looking like a piece of old leather. It had jumped out of its bowl in an attempt to get at the fly, which was now buzzing around the fish, landing on it from time to time.

When Alex learned that the fish had died, even though the necklace had been his real gift to her, the fish in its bowl had been nothing more than an extravagant way of presenting it to her, his response had been to give her an orchid each day for an entire week.

The gaudy little flowering plants had bloomed for months, then one by one the flowers dropped off them. After that, try as she might, she was unable to get them to bloom again. When she told her coworkers about this, hoping that one of them might have kept orchids before, a joke started that it was amazing that she could keep the viruses she worked with alive to study considering her luck with the living gifts Alex had given her. Someone, as part of a joke, eventually raised the question of whether or not one could consider a virus to even be alive to begin with since until it entered a host cell it was dormant, the potential to live, but not actual life. It then turned into a very roundabout, wandering story about how all the samples in one lab kept dying off overnight that got everyone laughing because of how absurd it was.

The only life a virus could possess was one it stole, and perhaps in that the Alex Mercer she had known had been like a virus when she first met him. He had no life of his own outside of work, just the illusion of it that he built for her, but she never realized this until too late, even though there were all manner of hints she had discovered once she moved in with him.

Moving in with him had seemed like part of a natural progression after all of the gifts he had given her and the affection he showered on her. He implied that her moving in with him would be a good way to show appreciation and help strengthen their relationship and she went along with it. Living with him beat being lonely by a long shot and it felt like the right thing to do, nothing at all suspicious about it.

It never occurred to her that she was doing this not because she wanted to, but because it was what Alex wanted. This was the first time she had been in love, or so she thought. Maybe it had always been about what Alex wanted but she had chosen to ignore it at the time for the sake of creating her own little vision of a perfect relationship.

She brought the orchid plants with her and under Alex's care they bloomed once again, after he had bought no fewer than three books on how to care for them. At the time she had found it touching, but now she wondered if it had been his attempt to prove his superiority, showing her that he could do something that she had been unable to. Hind sight was twenty-twenty, or maybe she was just reading too much into things after the fact, once again building something that was not real in an attempt to shore up her worldview.

He approached everything that way, treating everything as a challenge, then obsessing and doing as much research as possible until he got the information and results he wanted. One of the orchids had been slow to flower and he had taken it like a personal insult, for a month that plant became his obsession when out of work, the most common topic of conversation between the two of them, until it finally sent up a flower spike.

After that he lost all interest in the orchids and they were her responsibility again.

In her naiveté she failed to notice the similarities between his relationship with her, the way he approached his work at Gentek, and practically everything about his approach to life, with the way he had treated that orchid until it bloomed.

Each time they went out to dinner together they went to a different restaurant, each one famous for one reason or another in the culinary world, something which Alex took great pleasure in telling her about. His knowledge had impressed her until she found a Zagat guide to restaurants in Manhattan. The guide itself was neither unusual nor disturbing on its own, but the way Alex had used the guide was decidedly strange.

Each restaurant they had been to was checked off, with handwritten notes in the page margins about how good or bad the food or service had been with every little shortcoming cataloged, and more troubling, there were notes Alex had taken about what they had discussed. The restaurants where she had tried to get him to talk about himself always had the most negative notes associated with them, as though it were the fault of the wait staff that she had asked him about his parents or what college had been like for him. The more she had enjoyed those restaurants where she had asked him questions he refused to answer, the worse his comments about them had been, and now, looking at his notes, she realized something that had never made sense before.

Sometimes he would complain bitterly to her about the restaurants they had gone to, and they were more often than not, ones where she had been the one trying to guide the direction of conversation towards his life before working for Gentek rather than letting him control the flow of conversation.

Only once had he told her anything about his family, and then it had been to get her to stop asking. According to him his parents had separated half way through his third year of college, probably because of an argument between himself and his father. Why this would make his father want to divorce his mother he never elaborated on, but he did tell her that his father had stopped helping pay his college tuition and that at the end of the semester he had not gone back home to live with his mother because she would probably have tried to get him to go to a school closer to home, something he found unacceptable. He preferred that she not ask him about his family because it was a very upsetting topic for him, or so he had told her, even though when telling her about his family his voice was as flat as though he was reciting the procedures of some day to day task at work. Looking back she thought he might have made all of it up, but there was no reason for her to think that other than now wanting to believe that he had lied to her.

The only time he showed any emotion was towards her and it was only love and kindness when she was doing what he wanted her to do or acting the way he expected her to act. He never yelled at her, or got angry, though there were times when he would calmly explain to her what she had done wrong and he was so logical about it that she could not help but to agree with him.

As long as she humored what she considered to be his odd quirks, their relationship had been a fairytale romance, or at least what she assumed a fairytale romance was supposed to be like. After all, she was too smart to get into anything like an abusive relationship, that sort of thing only happened to uneducated women, not college graduates like her.

Everything had been fine until the day came where Alex Mercer had failed to get what he wanted. For a while he had been pressing his superiors for more information on where the samples he was working with came from and they had been giving him nonresponses until he pushed too far and they flat out told him 'no'.

For the first time in all the time she had known him, Karen saw Alex actually get angry and when she tried to comfort him as he stormed past the lab she was working in, in a perfectly calm voice he told her to leave him alone. The way he was shaking when he spoke, as though trying to hold back some terrible outburst and how he clenched his hand into a fist so tight that his knuckles went white and his fingernails dug into his palms it somehow more frightening than if he had raised his voice. Until then she had never realized that he might actually be capable getting angry, much less furious. It was as though he had been storing up every little thing that he did not like, every thing that ever went wrong, rather than letting it go, and now it was all going to come out in one horrific moment.

Even before he had been exposed to the virus, he had been transformed. He lost all interest in her, other than as someone to confide in and tell increasingly illogical theories to. Previously he had been logical, carefully working his way through all problems step by step, after whatever it was snapped in him, he grew paranoid, coming up with impossibly complex explanations for why he was not getting what he wanted. Someone was out to get him, they were hiding something from him, they were too afraid of what he was working on, they were trying to steal his research and strip him of all credit.

Now that she had been shown videotapes of what Alex had done during his rampage through the city, she could not help but compare his anger before with the way he could turn himself into a weapon now. The barely restrained rage she had seen in his every move and heard in his every word before he finally stole the Blacklight virus from Gentek was easy to connect to the way he could now explode into a mass of tentacles to destroy everything around him, or send deadly sharp spikes bursting from the ground to kill the soldiers trying to stop him. The fury and utter contempt had always been there, he just lacked the means to express it fully and possessed the commonsense not to act on it.

Once, made careless by anger, he ended up being unusually open about his work and had revealed to her that he was working with a virus the likes of which he had never seen before. He was sure that that it had been engineered, but its complexity was beyond even his impressive skill in the manipulation of viruses. He had managed to improve it, but he was certain he was on the edge of an even greater breakthrough if only he could get the information he was sure they were keeping hidden from him.

The search for this information had consumed him, and she got to see a whole new side of Alex Mercer, one she came to accept had been there all along, just hidden. It was the orchid all over again, only worse because there was nothing he could do to fix things to get the results he expected. This was the first time he had not gotten something he wanted and he did not, or could not, take it well. Over time he grew increasingly desperate.

Alex began to pay less and less attention to her and eventually she moved out of his apartment to get away from his obsession, but this did not stop him from calling her almost every night. Each conversation started pleasantly enough, with him asking her about her day and how she was doing, but then when the pleasantries were done the façade dropped and he started talking about how he had come to believe that he was being played for a fool by Gentek, that all of his research was going to someone else and that person was working on his project, his baby, the Blacklight virus. The idea that someone else might know more about Blacklight than he did or had access to information unavailable to him was something he could not tolerate.

This person, who might not even have existed, became the target of his anger, the person who knew where Blacklight first came from, had the files on 'patient zero' and 'MOTHER' who or whatever they were. His efforts to find this person came to nothing, and in his final, mad act of desperation, or perhaps spite, he stole a sample of Blacklight from the labs in an attempt to blackmail Gentek into giving him the information he had wanted, or at least that was what she had believed his intent to be when she first found out.

Karen had tried to stop him, but when Alex wanted something there was no stopping him, and she became a target of his anger. He had implied that if she did not intend to help him then she was part of the problem, going so far as to suggest that Gentek had hired her with the intent to distract him from his work, implying that she needed to prove that she was not in on the whole plot against him.

Finally, when there was no way out for her, she had been forced to accept that what she had seen in Alex was what Alex had wanted her to see, that he had been as much of a monster when she first met him as he was now. The only difference between then and now being that he had just hidden it better back then. Blackwatch had approached her with a way out she never would have gotten the chance at otherwise and like with Alex, she had been fooled into believing that they meant it. She had worked with them against Alex in an attempt to get her life back, make a new start of things someplace far away just like they had offered her, but their offer had been part of some elaborate act to get her to give them what they wanted, just like Alex Mercer's gifts and kindness had been an act to get what he wanted from her. Yes Alex had infected her with something alright, the same madness and paranoia that he had suffered from before he finally decided to take the rest of the world down with him.

There was no time left for her to learn from her mistakes, no chance for escape, just a long wait in a dark room, wondering when death would come and what form it would take, a bullet to the head from a Blackwatch trooper or something far more gruesome at the hands, or claws, of Alex Mercer.

An explosion sounded from somewhere near by, close enough to shake the building and make the lights in her makeshift lab and prison flicker. This took her thoughts down a new, equally disturbing path.

Officially Alex was dead according to Blackwatch and every official announcement. Unofficially, everyone who knew anything about anything believed that he was still alive and that it was only a matter of time until he showed up again.

Now he was back and he was coming for her. The only question that remained was whether or not she would run scared, or if she would be able to stand her ground and tell him exactly what she thought of him before he killed her, if she had time to say anything at all.

Unfortunately that choice was stolen from her by the Blackwatch soldier who came to escort her to safety. Apparently they either still thought she might turn up something useful for them, or they needed her as bait to lure him elsewhere. Whatever the reason, none of it mattered to her, she went along with the soldier, having decided that while she was ready to face Alex, she had no desire to be shot.

Out of her lab, she started to turn for the stairs and the soldier grabbed her, pulling her towards the elevator. A prickle of fear rose up in her at the touch. There was something very wrong about the situation, something that went beyond the obvious. Was Alex already here, tearing his way through the building in search of her? Weak with fear, she allowed herself to be guided into the elevator.

How did they plan to get her to safety when there was no place that could ever be safe from Alex?

The elevator jerked to a stop and she nearly fell backwards onto the soldier.

"He's here," she gasped, "He'll kill me."

Some small sound behind her, then, "I know."

So, this was it then, where it was all going to end. There was terror of course, but there was also bitter, inexplicable humor. She had gotten to see first hand Alex's mimicry abilities and the implications were hilarious. Her career at Gentek had revolved around the vast graveyards of junk DNA in humans, reminders of past battles won against viruses. Now she was going to end up in a similar sort of graveyard, one of humans within a virus.

Impossibly strong hands grabbed her arms, pulling her around so that she was facing Alex.

"I want – "

But she never heard what he wanted, her own hysterical laughter drowning out the rest of his words. The laughter never really stopped, just gave way to screams when the pain began.


End file.
